OUR MISSION

Strengthening National Security

Our Mission

Since its inception in 1952, LLNL’s defining responsibility has been national security — ensuring the safety, security and effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear stockpile.

LLNL’s mission has broadened in recent years, as dangers ranging from nuclear proliferation and terrorism to cyber-attacks and climate change increasingly threaten national security and global stability.

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Scientists viewing manufactured part

Mission Areas

Enhancing and expanding our mission in the broad national security space.

By splitting our broad and evolving mission into four areas relevant to the current and future stability of our world, we’re better able to address issues of nuclear deterrence, threat preparedness and response, climate and energy security and multi-domain deterrence. In all four areas of our central mission, we count on our talented workforce to think bigger. Through their exceptional work in preeminent areas of science, the Lab’s influence doesn’t stop at our country’s borders — our innovations make the world a better place to live.

Mission Focus Areas

Crafting broad-ranging solutions with immediate impact.

Today’s most pressing challenges require broad-ranging solutions with immediate impact. As subsets of the Laboratory’s Mission Areas, Mission Focus Areas (MFAs) are cross-cutting and institutional in nature, combining established science and technology (S&T) expertise and our ability to perform decision-driven analysis to inform policy. By putting our capabilities and experts at the core of our approach, MFAs help advance LLNL’s mission by accelerating credible solutions for national security and global stability.

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Our Current Mission Areas & Focus Areas

Mission Area: Nuclear Deterrence

Develop and apply the S&T needed to assure the safety, security and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear stockpile in an ever-changing threat environment and enable the modernization and transformation of the NNSA production enterprise. Key operations include:

  • Annual assessment
  • Stockpile modernization
  • Advanced science and technology
  • NNSA enterprise agility and resilience

Mission Focus Area: Stockpile and Enterprise Transformation
Accelerates the advancement of the sophisticated enterprise of laboratories, facilities and people ensuring confidence in the nation’s nuclear deterrent.

Mission Area: Threat Preparedness and Response

Provide unique capabilities and innovative solutions to stem proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, understand capabilities and anticipate adversarial actions and support response and consequence mitigation of natural and man-made biologic threats. Key operations include:

  • Nuclear counterproliferation and counterterrorism
  • Pandemic response tools and biosecurity
  • Forensic science
  • All-source intelligence

Mission Focus Area: Bio Resilience
A future-looking initiative to counter natural and man-made biological threats by leveraging LLNL’s unique competencies in high-performance computing, advanced biotechnology and bioengineering.

Mission Area: Climate and Energy Security

Advance understanding of the global climate system, develop technologies to reduce accumulation of greenhouse gases and pursue the domestic production and supply of affordable clean energy delivered across a secure and sustainable infrastructure. Key operations include:

  • High-fidelity climate impact assessments
  • Reliable, secure, low-carbon energy
  • Infrastructure sustainability
  • Advanced materials and manufacturing

Mission Focus Area: Climate Impacts and Resilience
Couples capabilities in material science, carbon cycle and subsurface research and climate simulation to mitigate greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and predict climate impacts at scale.

Mission Area: Multi-Domain Deterrence

The Laboratory creates a global strategic advantage through innovative technologies, strategies and analysis to bolster escalation and defensive capabilities across the full spectrum of domains including strategic defense, conventional strike, space and cyber and technology competition. Key operations include:

  • Emerging technology R&D and assessments
  • Strategic defense and conventional strike
  • Space/cyber security
  • Cognitive simulation/artificial intelligence

Mission Focus Area: Integrated Deterrence and Technology Competition
Requires working across domains, the spectrum of conflict and all instruments of U.S. national power, to reduce competitors’ perceptions of the net benefit of aggression relative to restraint.

Help us work together to keep our nation safe.

Embark on a career that serves your community and your nation. At LLNL, we bring our expertise to bear on the toughest challenges through community-engaged research.

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